87 ideas
| 19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
| 15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
| 15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
| 15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
| 16241 | The metaphysics of nature should focus on physics [Maudlin] |
| 21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
| 16257 | Kant survives in seeing metaphysics as analysing our conceptual system, which is a priori [Maudlin] |
| 16276 | Wide metaphysical possibility may reduce metaphysics to analysis of fantasies [Maudlin] |
| 21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
| 22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
| 15626 | Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel] |
| 15616 | If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel] |
| 16244 | If the universe is profligate, the Razor leads us astray [Maudlin] |
| 16255 | The Razor rightly prefers one cause of multiple events to coincidences of causes [Maudlin] |
| 15638 | Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel] |
| 21767 | Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel] |
| 15639 | Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel] |
| 15615 | Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel] |
| 19070 | Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel] |
| 5644 | In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| 19072 | In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel] |
| 19071 | The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel] |
| 5745 | Quine says quantified modal logic creates nonsense, bad ontology, and false essentialism [Melia on Quine] |
| 8789 | Various strategies try to deal with the ontological commitments of second-order logic [Hale/Wright on Quine] |
| 21595 | Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel] |
| 15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
| 15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
| 15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
| 16966 | Philosophers tend to distinguish broad 'being' from narrower 'existence' - but I reject that [Quine] |
| 16965 | All we have of general existence is what existential quantifiers express [Quine] |
| 16243 | The Humean view is wrong; laws and direction of time are primitive, and atoms are decided by physics [Maudlin] |
| 16271 | Lewis says it supervenes on the Mosaic, but actually thinks the Mosaic is all there is [Maudlin] |
| 16273 | If the Humean Mosaic is ontological bedrock, there can be no explanation of its structure [Maudlin] |
| 16275 | The 'spinning disc' is just impossible, because there cannot be 'homogeneous matter' [Maudlin] |
| 16963 | Existence is implied by the quantifiers, not by the constants [Quine] |
| 16964 | Theories are committed to objects of which some of its predicates must be true [Quine] |
| 4216 | Express a theory in first-order predicate logic; its ontology is the types of bound variable needed for truth [Quine, by Lowe] |
| 18966 | Ontological commitment of theories only arise if they are classically quantified [Quine] |
| 16258 | To get an ontology from ontological commitment, just add that some theory is actually true [Maudlin] |
| 14490 | You can be implicitly committed to something without quantifying over it [Thomasson on Quine] |
| 16259 | Naïve translation from natural to formal language can hide or multiply the ontology [Maudlin] |
| 22078 | Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel] |
| 15634 | Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel] |
| 16961 | In formal terms, a category is the range of some style of variables [Quine] |
| 16253 | A property is fundamental if two objects can differ in only that respect [Maudlin] |
| 16263 | Fundamental physics seems to suggest there are no such things as properties [Maudlin] |
| 16260 | Existence of universals may just be decided by acceptance, or not, of second-order logic [Maudlin] |
| 21981 | The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel] |
| 15637 | Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel] |
| 15613 | Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel] |
| 16277 | Logically impossible is metaphysically impossible, but logically possible is not metaphysically possible [Maudlin] |
| 16249 | A counterfactual antecedent commands the redescription of a selected moment [Maudlin] |
| 15636 | The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel] |
| 22300 | Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel] |
| 15609 | The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel] |
| 15625 | Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel] |
| 15619 | Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel] |
| 15620 | Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel] |
| 15622 | Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel] |
| 15621 | Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel] |
| 15632 | The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel] |
| 15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
| 16254 | Induction leaps into the unknown, but usually lands safely [Maudlin] |
| 16245 | Laws should help explain the things they govern, or that manifest them [Maudlin] |
| 15617 | In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel] |
| 15608 | The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel] |
| 21986 | Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
| 15607 | We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel] |
| 15610 | Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel] |
| 15614 | Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel] |
| 16248 | Evaluating counterfactuals involves context and interests [Maudlin] |
| 16250 | We don't pick a similar world from many - we construct one possibility from the description [Maudlin] |
| 16267 | If we know the cause of an event, we seem to assent to the counterfactual [Maudlin] |
| 16268 | The counterfactual is ruined if some other cause steps in when the antecedent fails [Maudlin] |
| 16269 | If the effect hadn't occurred the cause wouldn't have happened, so counterfactuals are two-way [Maudlin] |
| 16242 | Laws of nature are ontological bedrock, and beyond analysis [Maudlin] |
| 16247 | Laws are primitive, so two indiscernible worlds could have the same laws [Maudlin] |
| 16272 | Fundamental laws say how nature will, or might, evolve from some initial state [Maudlin] |
| 16251 | 'Humans with prime house numbers are mortal' is not a law, because not a natural kind [Maudlin] |
| 16270 | If laws are just regularities, then there have to be laws [Maudlin] |
| 16264 | I believe the passing of time is a fundamental fact about the world [Maudlin] |
| 16265 | If time passes, presumably it passes at one second per second [Maudlin] |
| 16266 | There is one ordered B series, but an infinitude of A series, depending on when the present is [Maudlin] |
| 15618 | If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel] |
| 15635 | The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel] |
| 21980 | God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel] |
| 15633 | We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel] |